I never understood how Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration for Windows Server 2003 improves security. It is always a risk to surf the Internet on a productive server. I guess there are not many sysops out there who do this. Sometimes, however, you want to download a driver or an update on a server. Usually you do this from reliable sources, and then Internet Explorer just keeps bugging you to add the site to the Trusted sites zone. What sense does this make? If you don’t trust the site you shouldn’t access it at all, especially not from a server. What extra security will it bring if I add it to a list of trusted sites?

If you only need to access the web every now and then from a server or if you are working on a test server, then you can disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration. The funny thing is that the documentation doesn’t say how to disable it. I guess that shall bring some extra security. I also didn’t find a way to turn it off in the IE configuration. It seems one has to uninstall it: Go to Control Panel, then Add or Remove Programs, then to Windows Components.

If you have to access web sites regularly from a server, I recommend using another browser. Don’t use Firefox for this purpose either. This web browser is too popular now and has probably as many security holes as IE. When it comes to security, my choice is Opera.

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